Wednesday, July 30

You knew it would soon be coming ~ my last post on Yellowstone. 🙂

While having lunch on the deck at Tower Falls we noticed a young mule deer.

There were fifty-plus people walking around the parking lot and in the campground store, but she contentedly grazed along the road ~ unnoticed by most of the people.

Camouflage is the name of the game when your are an animal is in the woods. Yes, there is a mule deer in this picture.

Then she settled in for an after lunch rest.

There was a man with a very nice camera taking pictures of the store and parking lot. I asked if he wanted a really good picture, and told him to turn around. It took him quite a while to find her, but when he did he thanked me over and over again.

There was a hawk or osprey looking for lunch ~ in the tree above the deer.

After lunch we drove toward Tower-Roosevelt.

Beautiful scenery

Traveling through Yellowstone was a long-time dream of ours, and everything was beyond my expectations. However, if you want to enjoy Yellowstone, you need a few days to explore ~ to really enjoy everything it has to offer.

We saw every kind of explorer ~ from those in big, fancy motorhomes…

…to those who were exploring by themselves on foot or on bicycle.

I’m not sure why Cerwin took this picture :), but it seems like a good time to mention that I really appreciated that these were generously placed on the main roads throughout the park.

At a certain point in the afternoon we made the decision to turn around and head south toward Jackson.

The bison in Hayden Valley were still roaming the roads and fields.

We even got to see a male antelope up close.

We could have easily missed him in the grass if we had not seen him cross the road in front of us.

Seeing wildlife on this trip never got old.

With that large satellite, someone was doing some serious recording of this area of Yellowstone.

This looks like a great way to see the countryside up close.

Seeing that we only have 22 miles to Flagg Ranch means that we only have 20 miles to go before we leave Yellowstone.

I am not ready to leave.

Oh, yes! We got to see one more elk.

The beautiful Tetons were in front of us again as we neared our next stop for the day ~ our motel in Jackson.